Compassion

During the homily last Sunday night, the Deacon who was preaching talked about Jesus' compassion and it was a beautiful reminder to help keep my behavior and my faith in perspective.

I've always been an empathetic person. If you feel angry, I'll feel angry. If you're sad, I'm sad. If

Me and my fellow emotional vampire

you're happy, I'm happy. Doesn't matter who you are, but if I interact with you, I will literally feed off of your behavior and emotions...J and I have coined ourselves as "emotional vampires" because it is the best correlation we have for this situation. But the homily reminded me that I can only feel so much of what people experience.

While I may be able to feel the same emotion as the people around me, I do not feel it for the same reason, and therefore I do not feel the emotion to the same intensity that they feel it. I don't know what it is like to lose a parent, to have a spouse who committed adultery, to see a small child suffer when they have just been brought into the world. So as much as I can say "I feel for you," I really don't. I am incapable of that.

Throwback to my friend's wedding and shoutout
to some compassionate ladies

But ya know who is capable of that? Jesus. Jesus has the ability to feel so much compassion for us that He literally can feel every ounce of our suffering. To go back to the previous Sunday's post, Jesus is in all of us, and thus he feels what we feel, in the exact way we feel it.  As we get closer to Advent, we remind ourselves that God was made man to save us from our sins, and with that comes a lot of pain for Him.  He not only has compassion for us and our sins, but also for how we feel each and every day. When we wake up and feel despair, He feels it. When we lose a loved one, He feels our sadness. When we feel love, He feels that too.

We are called to remember the compassion Jesus feels for us and to do our best to exercise compassion toward every person we interact with each day. Focusing on compassion will be a great way to prepare our hearts and our minds for Advent!

Speaking of Advent...Liv and I have set some goals for ourselves for Advent this year. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but we should have it all figured out by the end of the day today so I can fill you all in on Wednesday's post!

Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ~Colossians 3:12

Pax,
Kay